An Update On DahliahBy The dahliah connection

What Is Happening With Dahliah?

As many of you might know, Dahliah has been going through a rough patch. Unfortuantely, Dahliah had a cyst a while a go that had to be removed at the beginning of January.

What Does That Mean?

The cyst was sent to lab and we soon discovered that the cyst was a Low grade Mast Cell Tumour. It was not initially known by the vets that the cyst was a cancerous cyst, so only the cyst itself was removed. Now that we know what it was, removing the cyst by itself is not enough. We must go back and redo surgery, remove more tissue, re-send to lab, and if it comes back clean we will know that the entire tumour has been removed. However, since the first biopsy came back as “incomplete margins” the doctors must perform a more aggressive surgery in order to remove larger margins and catch any pesky stray cancer cells. Only a certified board surgeon is capable of doing this since normal vets may not be able to perfom the required level of aggressiveness to get the whole tumour out. If we don't do so, we risk the chance of either the cyst coming back or the cancer spreading. We do not want to take any chances more than we have to since, there is already a chance that we might do all of this and still end up with another cyst sometime in the future.

What now?

We have also asked our initial vets to request further testing on the original biopsy which helps us determine the behaviour and how aggressive the tumour is and if any treatment beyond surgery is required. For now we’ve done all that we can do, we’ve had the vets take two X-rays of Dahliah’s chest/lungs and an ultrasound was performed for her abdomen/spleen/liver. Thankfully there is no sign of spreading to any of the organs and her blood work is good. On Thursday, Dahliah will be heading back to the hospital for the surgery and will stay the night, maybe two. She is currently on some medication to control her histamine levels since the type of tumour that she has is known to release histamine.

While many vets and people don't advise/agree we have switched Dahliah’s diet to a pre made raw diet. I worry far too much about the starch, sugar, and processing of kibble. I personally feel that those are a higher risk to her cancer than a possible pathogen or bacteria in raw. I feel this is the healthiest food i can provide her with. I have been adding some coconut oil, golden paste occasionally (since it gives her soft poop) and and a mix of good herbal oils i bought for her. For now, thats all we know and from here on its a waiting game until we find out whats next.

Thank You!

We wanted to take a moment to thank you guys for your loving support at The Dahliah Connection, all the money has been going to vet bills in order to provide for Dahliah the best possible care that we can afford. We thank you truly from our hearts, we are truly grateful for the support and concern that you guys show us. Many of you have chats with us regarding normal daily things and some ask how Dahliah is doing and we cannot thank you enough for everything !